Common Sense

In addition to predicting that planes would be grounded and people would be put into lockdown in their homes well before these coronavirus-related events took place, my spiritual guide also told me in March of this year – which was five months before the actual occurrence – that corrupt Afghan politicians would disappear and flee, and they would be replaced by a totally new regime. All of this reinforces the Platonic tradition’s emphasis on intuition as the main intellectual and spiritual guide after the limits of empirical and positive knowledge have been reached. Thus, empirical and positive knowledge eventually have to bend to the will of intuition and mystical insights, as I have argued in a previous blog post.

Another insight that my spiritual guide provided was that Washington is bound to taste and experience some of the political and social turmoil that other countries have tasted and experienced in the past. One of the conditions that reinforce this insight is the polarization in the body politic. All major religions instruct empathy, in the sense that all major religions instruct people to wish for others what they wish for themselves. As someone who has lived a comfortable life, I have had access to books, health care, and basic income all my life. Thus, regardless of the political labels and categorizations of “progressive” and so forth, I want people to have access to books, health care, and basic income out of empathy.

But instead of a positive-sum approach where everyone benefits, certain Democrats and progressives have upset many people with their calls to “cancel rent” or to “defund the police” in order to push their agenda through. Democrats and progressives have complicated things in a society that is largely traditional and simple-minded, and as a result, there could be a populist backlash in the coming years. Virginia was thought to be a solidly blue state over the course of the last few years. But this month, a populist candidate for governor with a simple message and political platform based on education and lower taxes managed to chip into 50 percent of the Black vote and 50 percent of the Latino vote and thus win the election.

People want to own property and people want security regardless of their ethnicity and race, which is a fact and a reality that has eluded Democrats and progressives. Thus, the Democrats and progressives have become a party that lacks basic common sense, at a time when people are trying to simplify things and make sense of things in order to grasp the basics of life. To have social order in a society, people need to be able to possess and own property and to have security. And if Democrats and progressives have lost sense of the two most basic elements of social order, then perhaps Virginia won’t be the only state turning red over the course of the next few years. After decades of overreach and political dysfunction in Washington, Americans want to get back to the basics of social order. If that is too hard for Washington bureaucrats and politicians to understand, then they should perhaps go back to school or just listen to ordinary people.